Oz Politics Blog

The Coalition is paying the price in the opinion polls for its Work Choices, industrial relations reforms. Today’s Morgan poll has the Coalition at 47 per cent to Labor’s 53 per cent in two-party preferred terms. The Coalition’s primary vote was 39 per cent and Labor’s primary vote was 41 per cent.

Some of my commentators try and put a brave face on these figures with alleged errors of 5 or 7 per cent in Labor’s favour. I figure Morgan’s pro-Labor bias in today’s figures to be lower (between 2 and 3 per cent in two party preferred terms), as its two-party preferred figure was calculated using the distribution of preferences at the last election, and not according to how people say they would vote.

If these commentators want succour, I would look to the electoral cycle. Since the Coalition won government, it has not been unusual for Labor to be ahead in the middle of the cycle. My guess is that by the time the next election comes around the industrial relations reforms will be having little effect on voters.

Morgan is not alone in its bad news for the Coalition. If we aggregate all the polls for October, the Coalition had a two-party preferred level of support of 48 per cent to Labor’s 52 per cent over the month. In primary vote terms, Labor had 39.2 per cent of the vote and the Coalition 40.5 per cent.

The usual graphs are here.